


filling in the blanks as we go

by oopshidaisy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, First Kiss, Flashbacks, M/M, Missing Scene, fully based on the song cornelia street by taylor swift, i think this is sad actually?, if you imagine there's a happy ending this is actually very cute, it doesn't actually fit into the continuity of the movie but the movie is dumb so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oopshidaisy/pseuds/oopshidaisy
Summary: “I think I kept the jacket,” Richie says, dazed with the memory of it.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	filling in the blanks as we go

_2016_

“One hell of a blast from the past, huh?”

Richie knows he shouldn’t be barging into Eddie’s room like this; he knows he shouldn’t be helping himself to a drink from the mini-bar, trying to ignore the shaking of his hands. But, then, Eddie isn’t stopping him, so what the fuck.

“It’s like there was this whole locked room in my head,” Eddie says, “and now…”

Richie chucks a little bottle of whiskey in Eddie’s direction. He’s still sickly hungover from the Chinese restaurant and the accompanying terror, twenty-four hours after the fact. He’s thrown up eight different times since he got the call from Mike. And now he can’t sleep, either, because his life is fucked.

“Richie…” Eddie says. “Do you remember…?”

“Some fucked up shit? Yeah,” Richie replies dismissively. “It’s coming back in bits and pieces.”

It’s best to stay vague, avoid comparing notes when some of his memories feel dangerously close to wishful thinking.

“Fine,” Eddie says, every inch the huffy teenager Richie had known him as.

“Want to go out?”

“Out? Where?”

“Just, you know,” Richie says, unable to retract what had been an entirely impulsive question. “Wander around, I guess. We haven’t seen this shithole in decades.”

“It wasn’t Derry I missed.” Eddie downs his drink in one gulp. Richie’s fingers clench.

“Can’t miss much of anything when you don’t remember it, right?” He thinks his voice might be too loud. Volume control has never been his forte. He’s the bane of audio guys across the country.

“If you say so, Rich,” Eddie says, and Richie fucking _remembers_ that voice, goddammit—it’s the one where Eddie’s nonverbally saying he’s got the patience of a saint to be putting up with Richie’s bullshit. “Should we tell someone else we’re leaving the hotel? You know, just in case?”

“Or we could just avoid sewers,” Richie suggests. “Try not voluntarily entering haunted houses for a change.”

“This whole fucking _town_ is haunted,” Eddie mutters.

“I’ll drink to that,” Richie says, raising his bottle in an ironic salute before he polishes it off. The whiskey burns on its way down, reassuring and predictable. “Fine, just text Bill or whoever.”

*

_1991_

“I’ll get in trouble,” Eddie was saying, twenty-five years earlier. “It got dark hours ago.”

“So?” Richie said, from a few paces in front of him. “Can’t say I’m not better company than your mom, Eds.”

“That’s,” Eddie started, in his ‘telling-off’ voice, “ _not_ the point. Don’t your parents ever worry about you?”

Richie glanced back at him. “Not really, no.”

It was true that it was late, though—ten pm and September, too, deep inky blackness kept feebly at bay by a crescent moon and a couple of stars. Stargazing had never been possible in Derry; it wasn’t a pollution issue, but no one had any better explanations, either. There was something compelling about that dark emptiness, Richie thought. There was something addictive about the empty streets at night, silence broken only by his voice, and Eddie’s. They were fifteen and aimless, nowhere to go and nothing they had to do. A fall chill had permeated the air that week, but Richie wasn’t about to admit that he was cold. Eddie might suggest that they call it a night, and he—didn’t want that.

Plus, Eddie was insufferable about things like that. His superiority complex never allowed him to resist a good lecture if Richie (or any of the other Losers, but mostly Richie) admitted to being unprepared in any small way.

He suppressed a shiver and stopped in his tracks, waiting for Eddie to catch up with him. Eddie had just recently gained an inch of height, which still put him about a foot shorter than Richie, who was in the midst of a second growth spurt in as many years.

“Hurry up, short-arse,” he teased, with just enough of an English accent to make Eddie roll his eyes.

“Why?” Eddie asked. “We going somewhere in particular?”

Richie tugged on his arm. “Sure we are,” he announced, spinning them around. “We’re off to the stars.”

Eddie was biting down on a laugh, eyes big and bright in the scant illumination of a distant streetlamp. Richie kept entertaining this hope that he’d grow out of the way Eddie’s smiles made him feel, but if two years hadn’t done it he supposed he was a lost cause. The most surprising thing was that he’d managed to go this long without blurting it out.

“You’re so lame,” Eddie said. “And your hands are freezing. Why didn’t you bring a coat?”

“Because, my dear Edward, it’s summer.”

Then, over Eddie’s protests about September wasn’t—couldn’t _possibly_ be—summer, surprising himself with how much he dared, he said, “’sides, I’ve got you to warm me up, don’t I?”

“Touch me with those ice blocks you call fingers again and I’ll—I’ll—”

Before Eddie could decide on the appropriate threat, Richie was shoving his hands down the neckline of Eddie’s sweater. Eddie shrieked, trying to dart away, and Richie felt tears of mirth spring to his eyes, entire body shaking with laughter.

*

_2016_

“We should really talk about it, right?” Eddie says, his face tilted into the light of a row of newly installed streetlamps.

“Talk about It?” Richie asks, stalling for time. “I’d rather not, thanks.”

“No, asshole, I mean: we should talk about—us, back then. I remember—”

“Don’t see how it matters.” Richie kicks at a discarded can of Coca-Cola.

“Can you not be a dick for like five seconds?”

“I’m not _trying_ to be a dick,” Richie grits out. “I can’t fucking believe I forgot you, all right? I didn’t—if there’s one thing I should’ve remembered, it was…that. You.”

Eddie’s smile sits uneasily below the sadness in his eyes, the frown lines on his forehead. It’s ridiculous how little he’s changed; it’s impossible for Richie to still be able to read him so easily, as though no time at all has passed.

“You know, I watched all your shows,” Eddie says. “Couldn’t have told you why—I hated them. No offense.”

“Why would I take offense?” Richie shrugs. “It’s not like you ever found me funny.”

Eddie snorts, although there isn’t a lot of humor in it. “Of course I found you funny, you idiot. I—” He shakes his head. “Just thought of another memory. Of the time I bit my lip so hard it bled, trying to keep from laughing at something dumb you said. I never wanted to give you the satisfaction.”

“You found the Voices funny?”

“Oh god, no, those were always awful. I mean, sometimes it was funny how bad they were, but.” He grins. “That wasn’t my point. So you’ve done, what—three specials now?”

“Sure,” Richie says. He’s not actually sure; sometimes there are cameras at his shows and sometimes there aren’t, and he performs the same shit either way.

“I could never put my finger on it, why I kept watching them. And re-watching them. The one where you do that whole bit about awkward college experiences, and it sounds like you’re reciting them from a list of movie tropes, I must’ve watched that dozens of times. And it was like…I recognized the name, it rang this sort of distant bell, but it wasn’t enough to justify this urge I had to keep watching those truly sad excuses for entertainment.”

“Wow, say what you really feel.”

“You know they’re not good.”

Richie shrugs. “I like to think I’m decent at my job.” _I like to think I’m not going through my life half-asleep, performing the motions without ever really feeling them_.

“You’re—of course you’re _decent at your job_ , but that’s exactly the point. There was no life behind it, nothing of the real you. And, somehow, that was obvious to me even when I couldn’t remember what you are—what you were to me.”

“Christ, that’s some sappy bullshit,” Richie says, heart racing like he’s downed sixteen Red Bulls in succession. “Have you ever thought about going into the greeting card industry? They could really use someone like—”

“You kissed me right over there,” Eddie interrupts.

*

_1989_

“What are you doing here?”

“Fuck!” Richie yelped, wrenching his hand to cover what he’d been looking at and gaining a splinter for his troubles. “Nothing!”

“O…kay,” Eddie said, eyeing him skeptically. “Me and Stan were gonna try climbing that tree on Cleaver Street, if you wanted in. But, if you’re on the kissing bridge, I guess you have someone to _kiss_ …”

“No,” Richie said, too quickly. “I don’t. Or, I mean, I’m a regular Casanova, I could never be tied down to one… I was just… Let’s just climb that fucking tree, all right?”

“You’re truly out-doing your usual standards of weirdness,” Eddie said.

“It’s just a _bridge_ ,” Richie responded nonsensically, picking up his bike and steering Eddie away from the evidence. “There’s nothing weird about hanging out on a bridge.”

“Okay, weirdo,” Eddie said. “Race you to the tree!”

He set off with a head start that Richie, frankly, considered illegal. And Richie cycled after him, fast enough to ignore the way his hands were shaking.

*

_2016_

“Did you kiss me back, that first time?” Richie asks. He feels like his pulse is enveloping his entire body. “I can’t remember.”

“I—” Eddie says. “I wanted to. That’s not the point.”

“Oh, enlighten me as to the point.”

“You’re the most frustrating person in the world,” Eddie says. They’re not walking, anymore, just turned to face each other in the middle of the street. A few feet apart. “And you were missing from my life.”

“Sounds like a real bummer that you’ve had to remember me, dude.”

“Don’t be fucking self-deprecating right now, just let me insult you.”

Richie stares at him. “You’re, like, aware of the mixed messages, though? Like, you’re listening to the words you’re saying.”

“I married a woman.”

“Uh, yeah. You did.”

“I married a woman and I’m _gay_ ,” Eddie whines. “I _forgot_ that I’m _gay_.”

“I’m,” Richie says. Stops. “Sorry.”

“Right, well, that’s very fucking helpful.” Eddie takes off his jacket, lays it gingerly on the curb. He sits down. “Can you just make this easy on me?”

*

_1991_

“Take my jacket,” Eddie said imperiously, with the air of a royal offering his subject bread.

Richie paused in his consideration of where to strike next with his cold hands. “You’ll be cold,” he pointed out. Eddie was constantly expounding on his fears of hypothermia and pneumonia and fingers going blue and black and dropping off.

“I’ve got a sweater,” Eddie said sensibly. “You’re the idiot in a t-shirt.”

“And a shirt!” Richie said.

“With _short sleeves_.” Eddie slid his jacket off and held it out. “Just take it.”

Now arguing mostly for the sake of it, Richie said, “Your sleeves’ll be short on me, too. You’re still tiny.” But he grabbed the offering and put it on. “We could just stay out here,” he said. “Never go home.”

“Leave Derry?” Eddie suggested.

“Sure, leave Derry. Go somewhere together. New York, San Francisco,” Richie said. “One of the cool places.”

“Do you know how dangerous it is in New York?”

“You’ll have me there to protect you,” Richie said. “Plus, I’m relatively sure we won’t ever have to face a murder clown in New York.”

Eddie’s face looked briefly quizzical before it blended into understanding. This was happening more and more often, the forgetting. Everyone except Bill could go days or even weeks without thinking about the events of two summers ago.

“I think drug overdoses and AIDS are more real concerns than a—thing that we all might have imagined, anyway.”

“As if you’d ever take drugs or have sex,” Richie said. “But it’s fine, we’ll go to San Francisco. Nothing bad ever happens in San Francisco.” He tried to imbue the pronouncement with authority, but the sideways glance Eddie gave him told him he missed the mark.

“I’d go with you,” Eddie said. “You’d get us killed, but I’d go with you.”

*

_2016_

“How can I make any of this easy?” Richie asks. “We’re here to kill the clown that haunted us as children and you’re married and my entire life’s been missing something and, as it turns out, that thing is you.” He pauses briefly for breath. “And the rest of the Losers, but. Mostly you.”

“We were going to get out together,” Eddie sighs, his head hanging down as though he doesn’t have the energy to hold it up anymore. “Why didn’t we just leave together?”

“Life, I guess,” Richie says. “Happens to the best of us.”

Hesitantly, he goes to sit down next to Eddie, not close enough to crowd him. The curb is cold and damp, seeping through his jeans.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me how to make it easy for you.”

“Just talk to me about what you remember,” Eddie replies. “Make me feel like it’s not all in my head.”

*

_1991_

It was nearing midnight by the time Eddie seriously talked about going home. Richie was surprised it had taken this long, that he’d gotten to steal so many hours.

“We’ve got school tomorrow,” he reminded Richie, mouth downturned and serious.

Richie grinned at him. “Well we gotta get you home, then, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Eddie’s nose wrinkled. “I’m serious.”

“I am, too. I still think we should stay up all night and hitchhike our way to the West Coast.”

He smiled wider when Eddie rolled his eyes.

“Maybe when we’re eighteen,” Eddie said.

Richie stepped in closer. “I won’t make you swear on it,” he said. “But promise me this: it’s always gonna be me and you, right? No matter what.”

“No matter what,” Eddie repeated, quiet.

Richie wasn’t sure how you cemented a promise like that. Pinkie swearing was too juvenile, and handshakes were too adult. Blood oaths were something that Eddie would never stop complaining about the unsanitary nature of, years after the fact.

Half submerged in the darkness, feeling invisible and safe, Richie dipped down and pressed his lips to Eddie’s. His heart crashed into his throat and he didn’t give himself long enough to appreciate it before he drew back again, pink-cheeked and wanting.

“There,” he said. “It’s official.”

Eddie raised his fingers to his lips, rubbed over them. There wasn’t enough light to properly see color, but Richie thought they might be redder than usual, because of him. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his borrowed jacket and waited for Eddie to speak.

Eddie didn’t speak. He got up on his tiptoes and kissed him again, and kept kissing him for a long while.

*

_2016_

“I think I kept the jacket,” Richie says, dazed with the memory of it.

Eddie looks sideways at him. “I liked that jacket.”

“Sorry for stealing it,” Richie says. “It’s in my closet back in LA. Every move I kept wondering why I didn’t throw it out, this XS coat that I—I thought it must have been mine from when I was twelve, or something. Now I know why.”

“When this is all over,” Eddie says, “I think maybe I’d like to come see it.”

**Author's Note:**

> second birthday gift for sierra, love of my life and reddie shipper extraordinaire. you deserve the world, but you get this taylor swift fic
> 
> i'm now taking prompts over at [@morgan-starks](https://morgans-starks.tumblr.com/) because why in christ's name would i be working on my dissertation. if you liked this leave a comment! or don't! do what feels right. you know the drill
> 
> i'm also on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/oopshidaisy)


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